You bloody people keep referring to Walstreet as capitalism. If they are capitalist then why did they need one-trillion dollars to bail them out? True capitalism, true creative destruction, or principles along those lines. say that we should have let the institutions fail who had made bad loans and were in the position to fail. We should have let the chips fall were they may and picked up the pieces afterwards and gotten on with civilization. The same thing with Germany and France and their bailout of banks who made bad loans to the PIIGS. They should let them fail. What these protesters are protesting is corrupt banks and corrupt politicians, and greedy assholes who work for big banks, and the whole mess of what isn't true capitalism. Capitalism, read "Wealth of Nations", what we have isn't capitalism.

Occupy Wall Street is one of the most unorganized demonstrations I have ever seen. However, a movement which claims 99% of the population is hard to organize. The only thing is i'm pretty sure 99% of the population is apart of this movement, and the small portion that is can't agree on what or who they are protesting against. Some are protesting Wall Street others the government and still others are going after the capitalistic ideology itself. However, Occupy Wall Street should be warned that right now they are not accomplishing anything, and if they don't organize better fast they be better off going home and getting a job then standing out on a street with a sign.

I have read this magazine since the first day I entered college at the University of Montana. I understand the readers of this magazine are mostly prominent executives, aspiring executives, and everyone else. The arguments against the "Occupy" movement seem to dissolve the overall idea, or say "there is no direct objective". I think that the different objectives of this movement have a collective idea and agenda. Media shouldn't dilute the people's thoughts, and surely shouldn't say they have no idea what they are protesting against. Is it not possible for multiple peoples to protest against one ideal while protesting multiple facets of it? I can't think of a single political party that has one motive to strive for. Political parties carry multiple objectives or ideals. Do these "Occupy" protesters have to have one solid ideal to have their message heard? The dispersing of crowds in Oakland via teargas will NOT deter a young educated person from protesting, in fact quite the opposite should be the consequence. The city chief executives should seriously consider the demands of those young folks camped out on their capital lawns. Simply throwing (or shooting) teargas at collegiates will not solve the problem. Then we encounter the real question. "How do we equalize this equation?" If the unstable agenda of youngfolk was unclear, we are now ever more destitute. The Euro Crisis has failed to stabilize, and jobs in the United States are ever elusive. Why is it so ludacris to think our current system isn't the only solution? Just because we haven't had years at the helm of congress means we are unable to decifer economic and social equations? Young people should be heard. After all, didn't the anti-war protesters in the late 60's just want to be heard? Maybe I do as well.

Look guy who wrote this article. The reason the people are pissed at the people on Walstreet is because of the bail out. You are a big bank or you are AIG, or Fannie Mae or whatever and you get handed a trillion dollars because if you don't get your trillion dollars you tell Congress there will be no economy to speak of tomorrow. Two weeks later AIG gets to take all of their fat cats, mind you its the same fat cats who almost ran the company into the ground, to get blow jobs by hookers in Nevada at some spa resort. Bank of America makes so much money that they have to complain that they are no longer able to charge a $1.10 fee every time someone uses a card that was initially designed to save them money from having to clear checks. The oil companies are so concerned about losing money that they cut corners for safety on the off shore rigs, where they get to suck up oil basically for free and sell back to the people who really own it at super inflated, and artificially inflated prices, yet they cause the worst ecological disaster in history, and complain that they will have to pay for it out of the largest profits in the history of any company in history. We are all at the whim of Walmart, the greediest, corporate welfare recipient in the history of commercial enterprise, the company that is single-handedly responsible for shipping 30 percent of American manufacturing jobs to China in the last 30 years, all so we can shop at their stores and pay the China price. And these people with all of the interventionism, bailouts, corporate welfare, cronyism, lobbyist and everything else have the nerve to call this a capitalist system. Adam Smith would shit himself laughing at this definition of capitalism. As far as state funded pensions are concerned the only reason most of them are in such bad shape is because they believed the lie that was the stock market. When the overinflated stock market crashed so did all of these state pension funds. Most of them have less money now than they did in the Mid 1990's, and that's with 15 years of additional collections from pensioners. The state pension funds would have been better off if they had invested their pensioners money in a nice savings account or if they had bought state bonds or federal bonds. If the states had bought bonds with their pensioners money instead of trusting some mutual fund at least they would have known where the money went to, and then the states wouldn't have had to borrow money from banks who demand interest on top of premiums. But trusting in Walstreet is the primary reason why state pension programs are underfunded. They got screwed by the fat cats just like everybody else. But hey as long as the bankers get their outrageous salaries and fees. As long as the oil company executives and shareholders get super rich off of the backs of the rest of us. As long as Walmart continues to be the richest company in the world still receiving corporate welfare. As long as we continue to prop up with government funds AIG and Fannie Mae, and the whole time call it capatilism, let's just make fun of the doufous college kids camping out beside Walstreet, and let's pretend they don't have a point.

@bswift has it right. It's ridiculous for this author to tell the #OWS participants they ought to look at their parents/grandparents for blame re: the current economic situation. IOW, don't look at that man behind the curtain. sheesh.

If not for the social security and medicare programs, would those same parents and grandparents have enough in their private savings and retirement accounts to take care of their own needs or would they have to rely on their children and grandchildren to care for them anyway? This whole argument is silly.

There is an increasing longevity factor and there are also people who die before they reach eligibility age - after contributing for years to the fund. We have also seen an increase in disability claims.

The issues that concern OWS should be obvious to anyone who actually wants to understand the current situation and how we got here. The topic of SS and Medicare isn't even relevant! The very youth who are demonstrating (along with their elder generations who see the same issues)are currently relying on parents and grandparents due to the mess created by the corrupted system we've grown too complacent to change. It's time to clean up the dirty power of the 1%.

This is biased.
and poorly argued.
In the first paragraph the writer states: "It's rarely productive for one group of citizens to fight another over resources." Then goes on to say that young protestors should blame the elderly for taking too much of the pie?
No sir, we stand with our elders. We want a decent retirement for our parents for ourselves and for our children and our children's children. We can have a country where we take care of our elders.
Before anyone starts to argue that we "can't afford" social security and medicare they have to first justify the trillions of dollars being spent fighting never-ending unpopular foreign wars.

Liabilities and pensions were exposed to unnecessary high risk when the legislators made these interest rate swaps with Wall Street. Had TARP not passed, these interest rate swaps would've been cancelled.

This article is way off the mark. As a 28 year old, I believe older Americans deserve to be taken care of, they paid into social security and they deserve to be paid back. The problem is that they have lost so much of their hard earned savings on the irresponsible gambling of Wall Street and the frenzy of deregulation by politicians (to please Wall Street lobbyists). Wealth has been taken from the middle class in this country and it was no accident.

This column is such a poor use of space...ignore some of the real issues of accountability the protesters have been very clear about, and blather on again about the private and public sector entitlements of the baby boomers. And the point is? I don't think anyone would claim complete ignorance of the problems you describe, but you seem willing to ignore the real issues being raised by the movement - which is precisely why the movement started!

When you look at the level of criminal activity that took place, the fact that there is nearly a complete lack of accountability for it, and that now those same fraudsters are still in their chairs lobbying Congress to keep things tilted in their favor...is it really that hard to figure out what the movement is about? Surely you can be a bit more searching than that!

Nice try. The 1% has long depended on the partisan rifts between the 99% to deflect attention from the disparity. Left vs Right has been a strong one in the US. You also want to create the false dilemma of old or young to do the same. The reason that it is not going to be persuasive is that the line of demarcation is not clear at all between the two. There are so many 50 and 60 somethings who are suffering as much as the 20 somethings because the wage stagnation is several decades old. Without asset inflation to create the wealth effect, more of them are suffering than those benefiting from generous pensions and promised security nets.

Whether each of the OWS protestors have a coherent goal, gripe or not, the spontaneous creation of such a movement and globally speaks of a common angst. It would be more useful to identify the root causes of those than play these blame games.

Proponents of globalization and economic liberalism such as the Economist have a couple of blind spots when it comes to real world economics. You are perpetually on a crusade to prevent Capitalism being distorted by populist Democracy and yet blind to the opposite, of Democracy corrupted by Capitalism (ok with a few exceptions like your crusade against Berlusconi but the problem exists in all Western Democracies). The effect is that it makes you a bit tone deaf to the messages coming out of OWS. The second blind spot is the need for a balance between capital and labor neither of which can over-dominate the other for a stable society. Yet, you only focus on the former. That makes you miss the tectonic movements afoot. A writer for the Economist wrote in the depths of 2008 downturn that America is always good at re-inventing itself in the face of calamity. Welcome to a process of America re-inventing itself. Re-invention (like age) doesn't announce itself.

What is this re-invention about? A move to separate Capitalism and Democracy for the good of both and fine-tuning Capitalism (yes, even the beloved Capitalism requires fine-tuning at times without the need to herald Communism) to bring back a better balance between Capital and Labor.

Unfortunately, the simple axiom of capital moving to the most efficient returns is only a necessary but not sufficient condition for equilibrium. What the grand experiment over the last few decades shows is that relying on capital alone to self-correct is a failure.

Now people surely will point to the decades of improving and booming economic conditions as proof that it has worked. That is where the blind spot comes in. The side-effect of that movement was creation of "wealth" via asset-inflation at the expense of labor (no labor does not mean unions for some of our less enlightened friends). Asset-inflation gives the highest returns for capital in a booming economy. The fly in the ointment is that it is not a sustainable form of wealth creation if labor is ignored.

"Recent history suggests that each new cohort lives longer than the last, so this means that each generation gets a longer retirement, while its children get stuck with a progressively bigger bill. Resistance among seniors to even engage in a serious discussion about entitlements makes reform poltically difficult. This is delays decisions, which makes the solution more expensive still for future taxpayers and retirees."

Let's not also forget that the young are required to spend ever more sums and time on higher education, delaying income for a half to a full decade, for lower wages and higher medical costs (if they are lucky to get any). A growing part of their taxes service debt, if they earn enough to pay them. The lifetime debt burden of those entering working age is at critical mass. A good chunk of them probably are still stuck at home.

All the money traded in stocks and speculation is a catastrophic misalloaction of economic resources. All just to conjure a few more percentage point of spondulates from nothing.

The Botanic Gardens in my city just completed a major multi-million dollar expansion project. Etched into the new concrete pillars is some sort of inscription where the citizens of Denver circa 2010 dedicate this new facility to the future generations of citizens.

Several hundred feet away is a large display showing the current and future funding goals for similar expansion projects. Here you can learn that it's all been funded with muni-bonds. A quick trip through the city's books reveals that most of our debt is replaced at maturity with new debt.

As a mathematician, I can appreciate the nuance and ideology of debt finance, but it's really quite hard to look at this setup and think anything other than "Look kids, we built you this awesome facility you didn't ask for, and we stuck you with the entire bill, plus interest."

Warfare on the wealthy chunk of households is ridiculous, and thus generation warfare on the elderly is ridiculous. The cause is income, and asset is just a result of the flaw. We should instead talk to the high-income households who have been refusing higher charges, because the present framework of taxation, public charges and other household expenses for public services, which increases the marginal propensity to save, has been increasing the propensity to save.

This above idea may make you understood that warfare on the elderly households, which would discourage them from consuming, would increase the propensity to save among the younger, because the younger households would expect to receive as few peanuts in real terms when they retired as the elderly would at present; the younger households would have to protect their own respective finances due to the war they themselves were to wage on the elderly. That is, a huge boomerang in a nutshell.

Steepen the ‘effective’ schedule of income and inheritance taxes and other expenses, and don’t charge direct on assets. With the institutional changes, assets will be transferred to from the wealthier to the poorer in a built-in, non-arbitrary manner. Solidarity is the key for everything.

The main premise for OWS movement is and has always been greed and the apparent negative consequences to run-away growth.

Boomers have become accustomed to this despite the system blowing up while getting rewarded with tax dollars for failing to fix their failing deregulated house-of-cards, speculation-driven system causing greater strains on our youth. The few in control of this are outstripping political representation claiming corporations are people, while the younger indebted generation are left with a legacy of lesser fortunes and a dismantled safety net. Boomers have benefitted the most financially and are screaming bloody murder to protect what they were able to obtain over the last 40 decades generating greater disparity of wealth and eliminating the middle class to a more unstable.

So why on Earth should they be recognized any differently than "too big to fail"?